Clairefontaine Pastelmat

This paper/board, as it’s name would suggest, is primarily produced for pastel artists, but is increasingly finding favour with coloured pencil artists as well.
It has a surface texture reminiscent of very fine sandpaper, which is smooth enough to enable fine detailed work, but which allows for the application of multiple layers of colour and provides the potential for applying light colours over darker ones.

​I tend to use this surface for drawings of animals, but not usually for bird drawings. The texture lends itself well to the depiction of fur, but I find that it is not quite fine enough for the sharp detail I require for feathers and beaks.